Saudi Arabia announces major development at Mecca

Saudi Arabia has announced a large caller task flanking Mecca’s Grand Mosque, providing 900,000 other praying spaces unneurotic with residential and hospitality services for the millions of pilgrims who sojourn each year.

King Salman’s Gate, which includes respective high-rises adjacent to Islam’s holiest site, is an “integrated mixed-use destination” blending Mecca’s “rich architectural practice with world-class modern living”, the authoritative Saudi Press Agency said connected Wednesday.

The project, covering 12 cardinal quadrate metres (about 3,000 acres), and featuring indoor and outdoor praying spaces, joins a database of large developments intended to alteration the system of the world’s biggest lipid exporter.

Saudi authorities are besides spending billions of dollars connected the Masar project, which includes astatine slightest 40,000 caller edifice rooms for Mecca, towards which Muslims astir the satellite commune each day.

Worshippers sojourn Mecca year-round but arrivals highest for the yearly hajj pilgrimage, which drew 1.6 cardinal radical successful June. Revenues from pilgrimages were officially estimated astatine astir $12 cardinal successful 2019.

Increasing the fig of pilgrims is simply a cardinal constituent of the Vision 2030 task of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, which aims to diversify the system and trim its reliance connected oil.

The caller task was announced conscionable months aft the completion of a Grand Mosque enlargement that raised its capableness to 2 cardinal worshippers and extended surrounding courtyards.

AFP

The station Saudi Arabia announces large improvement astatine Mecca appeared archetypal connected Vanguard News.